


getting red in the face

by tosca1390



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-03 22:46:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2890784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“He gets along with you.”</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>“He says about five words to me every time we meet. I ask how the empaths are, he says fine with the straightest fucking face you can imagine, and that’s about it. Patrols have never been so lively,” Rina says dryly. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	getting red in the face

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts).



> This is really random. But I promised Jordan something for them, and this is what happened. SO. Our canon lives on.

*

“Tell me why I’m stuck with him again?” Rina mutters as she drives her first-generation SUV (with a barely functional hover-drive system, but it’s fine, they’re fine, she and Kit are _fine_ ) through the thicket of trees at the outskirts of the alpha’s aerie. 

Next to her in the passenger seat, Sascha laughs. It’s a warm, comforting sound. Rina, though her initial impression of Sascha wasn’t the best, has grown to truly admire the alpha’s mate, and sees her as a friend – one of the few female friends she has, other than Mercy, and Brenna in the SnowDancer pack. Sure, everyone is Pack, and she would trust any of them with her life. But the secrets of her life and her heart are different. 

Rina hasn’t thought about her heart in a long time. 

“Because you have a natural rapport,” Sascha says as Rina sets the car down and parks it. The summer sunlight is warm and bright, the fully-budded trees blooming all around them. Everything is leafy greens and sharp shadows, reminding Rina of just how attuned she is to her home lands. Naya is with Lucas, a rare afternoon alone for Sascha; she rightfully spent it shopping with Rina in the city, and texting Lucas about the baby every ten minutes. “He gets along with you.”

“He says about five words to me every time we meet. I ask how the empaths are, he says fine with the straightest fucking face you can imagine, and that’s about it. Patrols have never been so lively,” Rina says dryly. 

Sascha doesn’t bother to stifle her laugh, her cardinal-dark eyes flashing as she steps out of the car. “That’s not what I’ve sensed when I see you two together.”

Flushing at the back of her neck, Rina hops out of the car. “What are you talking about?”

“Let’s just say, the empathy comes in handy sometimes,” Sascha says slyly. 

Rubbing a hand over the nape of her neck, Rina scowls. So – well, so what? So what if she thinks Aden Kai is hot? So what? So what if her leopard comes to attention every time they share the same space and practically purrs _mine_ over and over again until she has to take a cold shower after every patrol meeting? So what if she’s been having wild sex dreams where the stoic _I-am-Leader-of-the-Arrows-I-am-alone-leave-me-alone_ face disappears and he’s just hot and focused on her, with his wide mouth on her skin and those long fucking medic’s hands between her thighs and – 

_Shit_. 

“I’m in a dry spell,” Rina mutters as they walk towards the aerie. As they approach, a ladder unfurls itself at the top and drapes down along the hefty tree trunk – Sascha’s preferred mode of entrance, when Lucas isn’t around to toss her over his shoulder like a fucking caveman. 

“It isn’t just you,” Sascha says, all amusement. “He’s interested.”

Rina’s leopard shifts under her skin, purring contentedly. She likes the sound of that. “Stop it,” she mutters. 

“I’m completely serious. He’s interested. And apparently Ivy’s heard him say he finds you intriguing.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rina groans, scrambling up the tree. Her pulse is beating right through her skin, her cheeks flushed. “I need a drink.”

“Which is why I think this undercover jaunt is a fantastic idea,” Sascha says brightly. 

Rolling her eyes, Rina waits on the aerie’s porch as Sascha climbs up the ladder. She frowns out onto the wide swath of trees, tugging on the ponytail draped over her shoulder. “I don’t see why I have to go with him.”

“Lucas wants one of our people partnered with him, and he trusts you,” Sascha says as she appears on the porch. She ushers Rina inside, and they immediately settle in the kitchen. The aerie has changed slightly since Naya’s birth; packmates assisted in putting on an addition to serve as a nursery. 

Sascha opens the ecofridge and passes Rina a beer, and pours a water for herself. “Besides, you have the opportunity to get dressed up and have a night on the town with a handsome man,” she says with a wide grin. 

When Sascha smiles like that, it makes Rina nervous. “It’s still a work night, with the leader of the Arrows,” Rina mutters.

“Who thinks you’re intriguing.”

“Please stop,” Rina groans as her leopard rubs up under her skin, pleased by the fancy. 

Sascha’s cardinal eyes sparkle in the summer sunlight. “You like the idea.”

“I don’t know!” Rina exclaims, taking a long swallow of her beer. “I just – he barely speaks to me!”

Grinning, Sascha sips her water, and stays blessedly silent. Rina just drinks her beer, and pouts. 

*

When Rina walks down the stairs of the cabin, teetering on three-inch heels she hasn’t worn since high school, Kit whistles from his seat at the kitchen table. 

“Oh my god, stop,” she hollers, the flush hot on the back of her neck and spreading over her bare collarbones and décolletage. She stops at the foot of the stairs and glances at her baby brother. 

“Hubba hubba,” he says with a smirk, his mouth full of a turkey sandwich. 

“Fuck you,” she mutters, tugging on the hem of her mini-dress. The scoop neck dips lower than she’s used to, a scarlet red cotton-synth fabric that breathes and moves with her body. Her hair falls loose around her face and shoulders, curly and honey-blonde against her dusky tan skin. 

“Hot date?” he teases. 

“A job,” she says, glancing in the small mirror hanging in the hallway. She spent an inordinate amount of time on her makeup, trying to look like a woman that frequents San Francisco dance clubs and bars often, smoky eyes and long lashes and red lipstick. When she was younger, she went to Joe’s, sure; but she’s on her way to being a senior soldier and she’s had bigger things to worry over. 

“You look real good for just a job,” Kit says wryly. 

Sighing, Rina turns and strides into the kitchen. Her wristlet, black and sparkly, waits for her on the table. She folds herself into her usual table and glares at Kit. Through the window over the sink, the sun settles through the tree line, orangey-red. Her ride – Vasic, actually – should be here in ten minutes, on the dot. He is always decidedly prompt. 

“I have to look good. We’re going undercover at that new club, the one everyone thinks Pure Voices is using as a cover.”

“Why a club?” Kit asks, chewing with his mouth open.

Rina reaches over and taps his jaw, frowning. “Don’t be gross. And Aden thinks it’s because no one thinks of Psy having fun. But because the races are beginning to mix more socially, it’s a perfect opportunity to plan right under everyone’s noses, and gather intel.”

Kit smirks, his eyebrows waggling underneath the dark hair falling across his brow. “Aden, huh?”

Rina grimaces. “Don’t you start too.”

“Hey, he’s the one that comes around here looking for you,” he says, starting in on his second sandwich. 

With that, Rina’s leopard perks up even as she blinks in shock. “ _What_?”

Shrugging casual as you please, Kit takes half of his sandwich into his mouth. “Yeah. Like twice now. Always looking for you. Seems like a cool dude.”

“A _cool_ dude?” she all but shrieks. “Have you _talked_ to him?”

“Yeah, man. He’s pretty chill,” he says, grinning around his food. Sometimes, she’s very proud of her baby brother. Today, she just wants to punch him in the face. “Had some suggestions on my karate form.”

Her jaw drops and she flattens her hands on the table. “Kit! Are you kidding me?”

“What? He’s friendly! A little quiet, but nice,” he says with a smirk. “Asks about you enough.”

“Stop it,” she says, heat flooding her face. Aden Kai, coming here? _Asking_ about her? Talking to her brother?

“Is that why you’re all dressed up?” he teases. 

“It’s a _job_ ,” she reiterates, rising from the table. She palms her wristlet and shakes her curls out over her shoulders. “And you should stop making friends with dangerous Psys.”

“And you should stop getting the hots for them,” he retorts. 

She flips him the bird as she passes out of the kitchen towards the front door and the porch of the cabin. Vasic will be here any moment. 

“Remember, practice safe sex!” Kit hollers as she walks out onto the porch. 

Rina flips her curls over her shoulders and sighs. Her leopard rubs up right under her skin, intrigued. 

_Shit_.

*

When Rina meets Aden, three blocks away from the club on their list, she nearly falls out of her heels. 

“Wow,” she says, glancing him over. 

In the dusky shadows of the California evening, Aden meets her eyes. He is wearing tight dark-wash jeans and a black button-down shirt, the first two buttons open at his throat. His hair, dark and shiny, lays ruffled against his scalp. Rina’s cat sits up and takes notice; he is extremely attractive, even more so than when in his Arrow uniform. 

(Wait, since when is his Arrow uniform hot?)

“Do I meet your approval?” he asks coolly. 

She can’t help but drag her eyes over him again, more slowly. “You’ll do, stud,” she says, her lips curling into a flirty smile. 

He blinks. “Stud?”

“Never mind,” she says, falling into step with him as they walk down the sidewalk. “What’s the plan?”

“Intelligence gathering,” he says, slanting dark eyes toward her. Her skin flushes. He _is_ looking her over. 

“You think I’ll fit in?” she teases, because she can’t help it. This Psy makes her loose-lipped, like a freshly mature leopard female. He gets all of her gears going and she just wants to pounce, to sink her teeth into him and lick. 

Aden doesn’t reply right away. But his eyes linger on her legs. 

She grins. 

The club is packed, even at nine in the evening. Rina doesn’t touch Aden, afraid of what she remembers of dissonance, but at the entrance he places his hand on the small of her back and then takes her hand in his, staking his claim on her in front of the doormen. The bass line thumps in her veins as she shakes out her hand, her fingers curling easily around Aden’s. 

“Humans at the door, changelings at the bar,” she says to him as they weave in and out of the crowd towards the back bar. The club is low-lit and shadowed, a mix of humans, changelings, and Psy. Her leopard nose picks out the scents easily, even masked with heavy perfume and alcohol. 

“Psy minds in the back offices,” Aden murmurs. They lean up against the bar, pressed hip to thigh. Rina’s hand falls to his chest and she leans in on instinct. 

“Can you tell what kind?” she asks, ordering a cranberry juice and a water when the bartender (a rat changeling) circles around. 

“Soon I will be able to,” he says. 

“Some medic,” she murmurs. 

Aden looks down at her. He is rather tall; it is a difficult thing to make her feel petite, but he does. She doesn’t mind it so much. “Your dress,” he says at last, eyes very dark. 

She blinks up at him, color flushing her cheeks. “Yeah?”

“It is quite lovely.” He pauses, tapping his fingers on the bartop. “You are lovely.”

For a moment, she was sure it was a trick of her hearing, or the music. Then, a slow smile spreads over her mouth. “Oh yeah?”

“The Psy minds are multiplying,” he says abruptly. 

She sighs. Always blunt, this one. “I think we need a code,” she murmurs, taking her cranberry juice and sipping it. 

“At a rapid rate, indicating teleportation,” he says. 

“Well, what’s your suggestion?” she asks, nudging up closer to him. 

His hand falls to the small of her back, in a movement she would call natural if it wasn’t… them. She tips her head back and watches his mouth move as he speaks. 

“We have to get to those back offices,” he says. 

“I could flash my breasts, but I’m not sure that will work,” she says dryly. 

His hand flexes on her back. “I would not – I would not like that,” he says slowly. 

“Meaning you don’t want to see them?” she blurts out, wounded. What is with the mixed signals?

He blinks slowly, mouth a thin line. “Meaning that I would not appreciate others seeing you in such a way.”

Then, he guides her away from the bar and towards the back, weaving through groups and couples. It takes her about two minutes to translate – 

Oh. _Oh_. 

Swallowing hard, Rina all but plasters herself to his side and puts her lips to his ear. “Would you be jealous, Kai?” she murmurs. 

Hand twitching on her back, he breathes out very slowly. 

“Perhaps,” he says as he turns his mouth to her ear. 

_Shit_ , she thinks, the feel of his hard muscled body warm and good against hers. _Oh, shit._

*

Aden is _so_ not a medic, not in a real sense. He does _something_ with his Psy abilities to distract the group in the back office, giving Rina enough time to skim some computer files and plant a bug or two made by Brenna especially for this intelligence gathering mission. Her latex-synth gloves soften the wild movements of her fingers, saving her from leaving fingerprints. She feels like a real spy, here and now. 

“No medic can make a distraction that big,” she says as she types rapidly. Her curls are limp, sticking to the back of her neck and her shoulders with sweat. The office smells of ice and steel and Psy, or what she used to associate with Psy; Aden smells warm and good, like pine and earth. 

_Home_ , her cat purrs under her skin. _He smells like home._

Aden, hovering near the office entrance, barely glances her way. “I have many talents.”

“And while being a medic might be one, it’s not your main thing. Is it?” she asks pointedly, fingers flying across the keyboard. 

He blinks at her. “You are persistent.”

“You like it,” she says lightly. This is the most they’ve ever spoken, just the two of them, and she finds she likes his sense of humor, his dry tone. 

“Hurry,” he says in response. “They are returning.”

“Do we have an exit strategy?” she asks, finishing up with a final click as she rises from the desk. 

He beckons her over, cracking the door open. “I do.”

“I hope it involves vodka,” she murmurs. 

Aden slips his hand into hers and tugs her into the hallway. The door locks shut behind them. She can hear voices down the corridor underneath the lingering hum of the music from the club, smell the Psy approaching. 

“Shit,” she whispers. 

“Come,” he murmurs, pulling her down the other end of the corridor. Her heels click on the shining black tile floor. 

“We won’t make it – “ she hisses, just as her claws inch out, preparing for a fight. 

Aden presses her back against the nearest door, cool on the backs of her legs and her bare arms, and bows his head. “Don’t say my name,” he whispers, eyes very dark. 

“What?” is all Rina gets out before Aden’s mouth is on hers, and she is sunk. Utterly sunk. 

He presses his body to hers, his hands cupping her face as he kisses her. It is tentative at first, as she opens her mouth under his and she sinks her fingers into his hair. She wonders if this is his first kiss; and then, he murmurs her name and she’s lost in the warm feel of his mouth on hers. As they kiss, they move in tandem, inching to the next corner and slipping around it just as the voices round the corner at the other end of the hall. Now, they are out of sight; they are just minds among money. 

Still, he does not stop kissing her. 

“Oh _god_ ,” she whispers when he lifts his mouth for a breath. “I – “

Aden’s hands slide over her shoulders to her waist, hauling her up against the long lean line of his body. Her skirt shimmies up her thighs and she throws her head back, hissing out a breath as he hoists her up. She hooks a thigh over his hip and digs her fingers into the nape of his neck and his shoulders, meeting his dark, heavy-lidded eyes. 

“Everyone has been looking at you in this dress,” he murmurs, his lips close to hers. 

“So?” she asks breathlessly. 

“I do not want them to look at you in this dress.”

“You _are_ jealous,” she says, delighted. Her cat stretches out languorously, drunk on the smell of him and the feel of his hands on her. 

In reponse, he kisses her again, slow and hot and wet. His tongue slides against her, traces her lips, and she shudders in his arms. 

“ _Fuck,_ ” she whispers into his mouth. “Are you – is this just business?”

Dark gaze glittering, he opens his mouth to answer. A cough from the end of the hall startles them. Rina looks down the hall and wriggles away from Aden, pushing down her skirt. It’s the rat changeling bartender, looking at them both with a barely-hidden smirk on his narrow face. 

“Get lost?” he drawls. 

Rina flips her hair and adjusts her dress with a sway of her hips. She knows how to distract. “The music got me going. Didn’t it, babe?” she asks Aden, glancing his way. 

“Well, employees only back here,” the bartender says, though he’s smiling. 

Aden takes Rina’s hand and guides her silently back out into the bar. They sidle into a place on the opposite side from where they started, and she orders a vodka tonic. There’s no need to stay sober; the job is done. The music pulses under her heels and she sighs, leaning against the bartop and avoiding Aden’s gaze. 

“It was not merely for business,” he says at last, his mouth right next to her ear. 

She pauses mid-sip, glancing at him. 

Aden’s eyes burn over her body, his hand finding the curve of her waist and squeezing. “I only focus on serious engagements,” he says. “You – I want you to be a serious engagement.”

“You hardly know me,” she protests before she can stop herself. 

He leans over her, his hand splayed over the small of her back once more. “I want to know you.”

“Why?” she blurts out.

“Because – “ he pauses, tilting his head. “Because, you intrigue me. And I – I like it,” he says slowly, as if the words are foreign. 

Maybe – just maybe- they are. 

Shaking her head, Rina sips her drink and leans into his chest. “Well – okay. But quit coming around when I’m not home,” she says, flushing. 

“I have yet to memorize your schedule. Also, I have enjoyed speaking to your brother.”

“It’s more fun when I’m home. Believe me, stud,” she murmurs. 

Aden’s hand squeezes her hip. They stay for thirty minutes, to ensure no immediate issues, and then slip away. Brenna will take note of the important information and pass it along to all who need to know. 

(They make out in the alley behind the bar for twenty minutes before Vasic arrives. Her lipstick is smudged and Aden’s mouth and neck are stained sticky red; she doesn’t give a shit.)

*

“Hmmm,” Sascha murmurs the next time she sees Rina, two mornings later. Her smile could light up San Francisco.

“Oh, don’t even start,” Rina mutters. 

Some things should be sacred, after all. 

*


End file.
